BY ZACH MORTICE

Image courtesy Raphaël Thibodeau.

For a temporary installation celebrating LGBTQI Canadians during Pride Month, Claude Cormier + Associates created a rainbow canopy to acknowledge a spectrum of identities that are “plural, diverse, inclusive, and nuanced,” as the firm’s website states. Asked to “create a place with a sense of magic” for a summer pedestrian mall, says Claude Cormier, his firm didn’t want to clog the streetscape with more visual noise as thousands of people in a festival atmosphere walked Saint Catherine Street East in Montreal. So instead, they looked up, forming an outdoor room with one kilometer’s worth of recycled plastic balls strung up on wires.

Six principal colors are differentiated with three hues each, hence the title of the installation (“18 Shades of Gay”). This long strip of color (more…)

A monthly roundup of the news, dispatches, and marginalia that caught our eye.

In the October Queue, the LAM staff catches up with Canada, imagines Boston as the Venice of Massachusetts, finds Florida’s (new) secession threat alarming, reads the phrase “climate apartheid” for the first but probably not the last time, and orders some adult stickers.

CATCHING UP WITH…

• Landscape Architecture Network explores the Canadian Museum of Civilization Plaza by Claude Cormier Associates (“How Sweet,” LAM, January 2013), whose graceful, undulating curves reflect the architecture as well as the Canadian environmental landscape.

OUR WOBBLY WORLD

•Future Lagos reports on a plan to protect Lagos, Nigeria, one of the world’s most populous (21 million) coastal cities, from the effects of climate change. Will a planned eight-kilometer “Great Wall of Lagos” create an eco-urban utopia or “climate apartheid”?

FIELD STUDIES

• Are shared streets a great innovation for pedestrians, or a complete nuisance to motorists? Chicago will soon find out with its very first shared street to begin construction this winter.

• Cascadian Farm, owned by General Mills, has launched a new “Bee Friendlier” campaign to promote the cultivation of wildflowers for our pollinator friends. But with Cascadian Farm making up only 3 percent of General Mills, some claim it’s not enough to offset the other 97 percent of bad bee practices.

•Landscape photographer Mishka Henner will talk about “Looking Down, From Up Above” with Andrew Hammerand and Julian Roeder on Tuesday, November 4 at 5:00 p.m. at the Open Society Foundation in New York City. The talk is part of the Moving Walls 22 exhibition; Dutch Landscapes will be on view November 4, 2014–May 8, 2015.